October 12th: Thorntons Milk Chocolate with Lemon and Sea Salt

NOTE: This review is one that never made it on to the site earlier this year. I believe this bar is out of distribution, though that is perhaps a good thing judging by the review I wrote back then :-)

Kcal 571 Fat 38.8g Fat(sats) 23.7g Carbs 45.2g (per 100.0g)

It's been a long while since I last wrote a review on a Thorntons chocolate so it was a welcome surprise last week when this new limited edition bar came to me via one of their PR agencies. Hot off the news that they will soon be releasing some other limited edition bars to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee (See HERE), this Lemon and Sea Salt bar has also been recently released and today I got the chance to try it. On the back of the out cardboard box the chocolate came described as 'milk chocolate with natural lemon oil and Cornish sea salt' - this wasn't exactly the most conventional flavour mix I had come across.

Introduced as part of the square bars range, this was another limited edition that didn't reach the usual 90.0g weighting and clocked in a little smaller at 80.0g. The usual reason that Thorntons attribute this to is that the ingredients for some of these limited editions cost more - Cornish Sea Salt!? Lemon Oil!? These two didn't strike me as ingredients that would cost anything out of the ordinary! I could be wrong!? Anyway, suffice to say the presentation was on the whole nice and though I would of perhaps used a pastel yellow colour instead of the sky blue to communicate the flavour of the chocolate.

Unwrapping the chocolate from it's foil confines the aromas that greeted me were of mild cocoa and a light fruity hint.They certainly weren't indicative of the strength that the lemon would play in the taste of the chocolate and this is maybe why the development of flavours that I tasted came as such a surprise. Expecting just light citrusy suggestions the actual flavour development was anything but and the lemon influence was dominant from the beginning of the melt. Indeed from the very first few seconds on the tongue, the taste of sweetened lemon was the overriding element and it stayed this way without any real progression or enhancement. There was a certain creaminess to the taste which prohibited it from being totally mono-flavoured, however the sea salt was almost completely undetectable and many of the chocolate characteristics were lost. It wasn't a horrible tasting chocolate by any means but after just a few blocks the lack of variability came across as awfully one-dimensional and frankly unexciting.

Overall this was a flavour combination that just didn't do it for me. As I said at the start of the review, lemon and chocolate isn't a pairing you normally find and I think this bar is evidence as to why this might not be such a bad thing. In a nutshell this was a chocolate that offered a very limited taste experience and because I was very far from being bowled over by what was on offer I can only offer it a bit of a poor score in that regard. I can see that fans of lemon flavoured confections might be able to get some enjoyment from this chocolate, though those people aside I don't think there is much in the way for others. I'm all for manufacturers trying out new things but I'm afraid this one didn't do it for me. It wont be a chocolate I will sorely miss when it's limited time release is up.